Part One
Hope Comes in the Beginning
Hope often couples with excitement, and these emotions swell at the start of something new. But they are a fragile pair, easily choked out, often strangled by the pace and pressure of the process.
Excitement fades to dread and cynicism. Hope loses the battle against futility. We must hold on to hope with both hands. Donât let it slip away.
Hope held is hope renewed, the fuel for endurance on the journey ahead.
Chapter 1
âLetâs Go!â
The Hope of Beginnings
âLetâs go!â
This rally cry means weâre off. Weâre on a new adventure, stepping into a new moment. âLetâs goâ is our invitation to begin. We love beginnings.
Beginnings have allure. They beckon us forward, they call us ahead, and they draw us from where we are. Beginnings are fun and enticing, a call for celebration. When youâre just getting started, anything seems possible. Thatâs the simple beauty of the beginning.
Letâs think about this.
When you start a new job, you go out and celebrate with friends. When you have a great first date, you go home with a smile on your face, and your mind races with the possibility of what lies ahead.
When you rent your first apartment or purchase your first home, you might sense an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction that you are on your own. You have independence. You can hang pictures where you wantâor donât if youâd rather not. You can put a bicycle in the living room or a new TV. (I hung surfboards in my living room for about five years.)
After all, itâs your beginning, in your new place.
If youâre a runner, you know that the beginning of a marathon starts with the fanfare of cheering and a starter pistol, of crowds and momentum and excitement. The party at the starting line of a race is exhilarating. At the start, everything is in front of you, and everything seems possible.
What Is Uniquely Available in the Beginning?
At the starting line, that emotion we feel is actually hope. We donât initially recognize it by that name because it looks and feels like excitement, the jitters, or the butterflies. But deep down, what we feel is something of much greater consequence.
Deep down, there is a desire and a longing. In this beginning, where everything is in front of us, there is a powerful, available hope. At its essence, hope is a desire that what we start will turn out well.
We hope the first date will lead to a great relationship. We hope this race will provide a sense of conquest or accomplishment. We hope buying the house will prove to be a good investment and a place filled with incredible memories. We hope our jobs will be satisfying and our careers will be successful. A beginning is a blank slate for a beautiful, hopeful future.
Beyond Beginning to an Encounter
I live by the ocean. It is a tough life, but someone has to do it.
I try never to take this gift for granted. To keep my appreciation fresh, I often drive down to the beach just to put my feet in the sand. Having grown up in Atlanta, I was landlocked for twenty-one years. The only way to watch the waves was to save our vacation money and drive seven hours to the ocean once a year. Now that itâs only a ten-minute drive, I take full advantage of it.
One of my favorite things to do is watch the sunrise. Although, if you think about it, the sun isnât really rising. What is actually happening is even more spectacular. Iâm not simply standing still, waiting for the sun to come up. Iâm balancing on a rotating rock as it flings through space at about sixty-seven thousand mph, spinning around at a thousand mph. I am waiting to spin far enough to catch the first glimpse of a humongous ball of fire nearly ninety-three million miles away.
Astounding.
We casually call it a sunrise, but Iâd say it is a beautiful miracle. Itâs a fresh start, designed and executed by the Maker of the universe, and it happens every single day.
And most mornings we sleep right through it.
Letâs clarify: not all beginnings are miraculous, and not everything begins because you wanted it to. Sometimes a beginning starts because you were in the right place at the right time, and sometimes it starts because you are at the wrong place at that time. Sometimes it begins with a peek at something that will become your new reality.
Maybe you didnât plan to start a new season in your life, but you have suddenly found yourself at a new beginning. I call these âencounters,â these moments when your life collides with a new reality you had not considered, one you perhaps did not know existed.
I had one of these encounters in the fourth grade. Before that point, my life consisted of an imaginary world of dinosaurs, spaceships, and an occasional visit from Godzilla. At recess my friends Jon, Scotty, and I escaped the demands of the school day to enter our make-believe world and elaborate on the latest time-warp feature on our spaceships. We were invincible, naĂŻve, and absorbed in our own ideas.
Then something happened.
After a productive recess, I arrived at my desk to collide with a reality I did not know existed. A note lay on my desk, and I unfolded it to read this:
Here was a question Iâd never considered. As far as I recall, the thought of liking a girl had never occurred to me, and now I couldnât get that discovery out of my head.
I tried to ignore it, but it wouldnât go away. Everything in me just wanted to pretend that I hadnât read those words, but it was too late. Iâd already collided with this new reality.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldnât get the question out of my mind. I couldnât pretend that I didnât see it. Every time I saw Jennifer, I owed her an answer. The uncertainty of what was happening made we want to avoid her and just retreat to spaceships and dinosaurs.
That is the nature of such an encounter. You didnât plan it or even desire it, but it happened. Most encounters donât arrive as easily as a handwritten note inviting you to circle Yes or No, but there are things that happen that demand our attention and, more importantly, our response.
You have collided with reality. Escape is not an option.
The older we get, the more complicated things becomeâespecially beginnings. You have patterns youâve established and people that depend on you. You canât just stop what youâre doing to start a new beginning. And yet you canât ignore the encounter.
There are some things you canât unsee. You canât ignore it or shrug it off, even if you try. Once youâve seen it, it has invaded your scope of awareness, and you know itâs going to make things different. It exists now, and it has your attention.
Fear makes you want it to go away, but hope breathes a different emotion.
Sometimes you can look back and recall the exact moment something began, the second you encountered something new that changed you. These small, unexpected moments can serve as a catalyst for something deeply profound.
Whether it is good news or bad news, this encounter is a collision. You have run into something you canât escape.
Something that changes and shapes you and your future.
Something new has begun, and you must decide how to respond.
Fear makes you want it to go away, but hope breathes a different emotion.
You can try to ignore it or wish it away, but itâs there now. And itâs calling you to make a decision. You have to create a point in time to intentionally deal with the new reality, and this brings you to the conclusion of what has been.
A Burning Encounter
Moses experienced an encounter he didnât ask for, one that called him to a brand-new beginning. This is recorded for us in the second book of the Bible, called Exodus. As an Israelite baby, he had been adopted by the Pharaohâs daughter and had grown up in Pharaohâs household with all the royal privileges and amenities of the most powerful family in the world. But the freedom he enjoyed was built on the backs...
